Since 2017, ACBSP has hosted a poster session at the annual conference to help business faculty circulate research and move toward publication. This event has not only been a great benefit to the presenters, but it also has advanced the knowledge of business education around the globe.
Dr. Brenda Johnson, professor in the Business Department and Director of the MBA program at Northwest Nazarene University, was the person who introduced the idea of a poster session to the Marketing Committee.
Brenda was innovative in the classroom and passionate about her students. She fulfilled a lifelong dream to teach on the mission field in the fall of 2016, when she took a 5-month sabbatical to teach at African Nazarene University in Nairobi, Kenya. She returned twice more to Kenya on international business trips with her students. While she was there, she established a non-profit called Mama Brenda’s Ministry to assist three girls’ schools with personal and educational supplies.
Brenda taught at NNU for more than 20 years. NNU President Joel Pearsall said: “Brenda was a model, a picture of what it looked like to live into the four core values of Northwest Nazarene University: Transformation, Truth, Community, and Service.”
Brenda served on the ACBSP Marketing Committee for many years, participating on nearly every monthly call, even while she was teaching in Kenya. She championed the idea of offering a poster session at the annual conference, asking members to share ways in which they utilize their ACBSP accreditation to market their business programs.
Together with Dr. Tilokie Depoo, Brenda developed a rubric and invited a team of evaluators to judge the posters. Under Brenda’s leadership, the poster session grew from eight participants at ACBSP Conference 2017 in Anaheim, to 13 participants at ACBSP Conference 2019 in Houston. She was thrilled to announce not one, but two winners in Houston with scores too close to decide a single winner. Brenda remained in the room with participants and attendees, long after the session ended, looking for ways to improve the poster session in the next year.
Sadly, the Houston conference was Brenda’s last. She passed away on May 7, 2020, after an extended illness.
Brenda was an incredibly generous person, always thinking of others. She was passionate about people. She was committed to helping ACBSP members recognize that the accreditation they worked so hard to achieve and maintain could help them market their business programs and increase enrollment. The poster session was her vehicle to fulfill that commitment.
In looking for a way to honor her service to ACBSP, to her colleagues, and to her students, the Marketing Committee recommended to the Board of Directors that the ACBSP Poster Session be named after the person who introduced the idea and grew the program.
At their February 2021 meeting, the Board of Directors voted unanimously to change the name of the poster session to the Dr. Brenda Johnson Poster Session.
ACBSP members have a chance to present at ACBSP Conference 2021 by submitting a proposal for the Dr. Brenda Johnson Poster Session.
Share ways in which you’ve integrated your ACBSP membership, candidacy, or accreditation to market your business programs, as well as how your efforts have helped recruit and retain students.
Send you poster proposal to Melinda Dorning, mdorning@acbsp.org, by April 30, 2021. Click here for details.